Father's Day
by Serrafina
Summary: When Kara was little, just five years old, she got tired of bedtime stories.


Title: Father's Day

Disclaimer: Not mine; not for profit.

Author's Note: This was written for a ficathon at the livejournal community karathracelives over a year ago. The prompt was 'father's day' (fancy that). I recently rediscovered this piece (along with a few others) and decided to post it here.

* * *

When Kara was little, just five years old, she got tired of bedtime stories. "You always tell the same stories," she told her daddy. She wanted something new. What would she like to hear, he asked her. She thought about this and said, "answers."

"Well," he said, "I can give you those. But first you need a question."

So that became their new bedtime ritual—Kara would think of a question every day and every night she got an answer. Sometimes she asked about things she'd read or seen on TV, things other children had said, or things her teacher had told her in school. She asked about things she wanted to do, and always her daddy answered her.

"Why are you a pi-a-nist?" she asked once.

"I'm a pianist," her daddy said after a moment, "because music is perhaps the only truly universal part of life on these Twelve Colonies. Because I write a song, and someone can hear it all the way on Leonis, or Virgon, or anywhere really. In the farthest corner of the galaxy, someone can hear me playing the piano—"

"That piano in our living room?" Kara said, sitting straighter in bed.

Her father's smile was brief, but it lingered in his eyes. "That piano in our living room. Someone can hear me playing it and...be moved."

Kara giggled; her daddy was silly. "You can't be _moved_ by a piano. That doesn't make any sense."

He smiled again, but wider this time. "Not physically moved, no. But what I mean is that someone may hear something in my music—what I'm thinking or feeling maybe, or maybe they'll hear something that they want, something that they cherish or, or something they've lost. Anything." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her temple, then tucked the covers around her as she obligingly wiggled down into the bed. "And that, my dear, is why I am a pianist."

He stood up then and turned to leave, switching off the light as he stepped through the door.

"And Momma?" Kara's voice halted him just inside the doorway.

He looked back at his daughter and could just make out her eyes, wide and bright, in the darkness.

"Why is Momma a marine?"

He watched her, curled up in the too-big bed, one little fist pressed up against her chin as she waited.

"Just one question tonight," he said, and closed the door.

But Kara never got around to asking her question again, and after awhile she got tired of that game too. Soon enough they went back to bedtime stories, though this time Kara fixed them to suit her. But she remembered his voice, his brief smile, and the feeling of his kiss that night.

When Kara was seven, her daddy left and the house became quieter than it had ever been before. She didn't miss the shouting but she did miss the music. Her father's piano still stood in the living room, but it was dusty now, and the shadow it cast was no longer so friendly. Her momma stared at it sometimes, and when she did Kara knew to be extra careful because that was a sure sign that Socrata was not in a forgiving mood.

Kara came downstairs once in the middle of the night to get a drink of water or something silly like that, and she stopped before entering the room. In the near-darkness, the burning end of her mother's cigarette seemed to be pulsing, blazing even as she tapped out the ashes between draws. Kara watched her mother's mouth move soundlessly between smoky breaths. She was transfixed by the gleam of her mother's eyes as she brought the cigarette to her lips, her gaze steady and stern on that piano.

She withdrew as quietly as she could and returned, thirsty, to her room.

It wasn't until Father's Day that Kara finally worked up the nerve to pull out the bench and uncover the keys. She only remembered one song he'd taught her, but she closed her eyes and let her fingers feel their way across the smooth ivory.

Until her mother came home early from the store. Kara won her first trip to the hospital that Father's Day.

Six stitches later, Kara could still feel the ivory under her fingers and the simple melody in her ears. She smiled because she knew it had been worth it.

"Happy Father's Day, Daddy," she whispered to her empty room, and she hoped he heard that too.


End file.
